document updated 14 years ago, on Sep 21, 2010
FreeGeek's income really spiked for the first time in September 2010. We now have two risks:
- underinvestment — We're at a point in our growth curve where, if we spend too little, our growth could really be stunted. Along the same lines, spending without prioritizing properly could stunt us as well, by wasting money on things we don't care about.
- overspending — Obviously, we don't want to risk insolvency. With increased income, our ambitions can increase a lot, but they can't increase too much.
We need to hit the sweet spot — spending the right amount, and on the right things.
Priorities
What are the right things? How do we determine our spending priorities?
One obvious priority is "growth". By re-investing our profits, we can rapidly expand, and a bigger FreeGeek is a FreeGeek that's able to accomplish more of its goals.
However, as a philanthropic organization, our goal is different from commercial institutions. We do not have the singular goal of growth at any costs, or growth without bound.
This is another Goldilocks question: We don't want to be too small, and risk collapse, or be unable to meet any of our goals. We don't want to be too big, and have a hegemonic influence that hurts others. We want to be just the right size. But not even the Portland mothership knows what the right size is.
Other priorities
We know that we want to focus on more than just growth. But what other things, precisely? And how do we, as a community, determine their importance?